sculpture garden

Looking for inspiration in an urban environment can leave a designer with precious few useful references.  Take downtown Chicago, for example, where our indigenous waterfeature is Lake Michigan and our public art is too often plopped in the middle of concrete plazas.   Be that as it may, I do my part by trying to introduce both water and art into my projects.  So I was thrilled to be retained by Mary O'Shaughnessy, owner of the Wood Street Gallery in Chicago, to design a sculpture garden.  I knew it would give me the chance to create a balanced, beautiful space - even though I also knew the job wouldn't be easy.   What she wanted was a garden environment in which she could display and sell contemporary American sculpture - a place that would help clients visualize the way the art might look in their own gardens.   As we dug deeper, we uncovered additional goals:  It needed to be a space that would accommodate a changing variety and number of pieces; it had to be functional for large parties; and it had to incorporate and acknowledge the garden's urban neighborhood while still providing a sense of enclosure for gallery visitors (and, of course,